Over time, individuals have begun to use computing devices to assist in more and more of the activities in their daily lives. While computing devices were traditionally limited to data entry and manipulation and information gathering, advances in technology and increased accessibility have seen computing devices used for online bill payment, electronic wallets, accessing of sensitive records, vehicle registration, license renewal, exchange of documents, etc. Such activities typically require the individual to authenticate themselves, to ensure that the individual is who they purport to be, so that there is no unauthorized access to or usage of data.
In many cases, authentication involves no more than the use of a password previously registered by the individual. However, there are cases where a password may be insufficient. For example, an individual may want a higher level of security on payment credentials stored in their computing device due to the ability for a password to be compromised. In such instances, some computing devices are configured to capture biometrics of the user, which may be used in place of, or in addition to, a password or other form of authentication to provide for increased security.
However, in many cases it may be difficult, or in some instances even impossible, for an application program installed on the computing device to access the biometric data. In other cases, the program may have access to the biometric data, but may have to be specifically programmed to perform authentications using the biometric data, which may be difficult for application developers. To assist with the use of biometric data, the Fast IDentity Online (FIDO) Alliance was created, which provides specifications and standards for use of biometrics in user authentication on a computing device. However, such specifications require a computing device to have a FIDO-compliant application program already installed, and also require an active communication connection to an outside server, which receives and uses keys generated by the FIDO-compliant application in the authentication. In many cases, connectivity may be unavailable or inconsistent, and a computing device may not have a previously established FIDO-compliant application.
Thus, there is a need for a technical solution where FIDO-compliant biometric authentication can be performed locally on a computing device for usage by additional third party programs on the computing device.